New York Film Festival has set the RaMell Ross-directed historical drama “Nickel Boys” as its opening night movie.
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The screening will take place Sept. 27 at Alice Tully Hall. “Nickel Boys” is adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel and stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. The story follows two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow-era Florida. Herisse and Wilson play Elwood and Turner, whose close friendship helps sustain their hope even as the horrors mount around them at the Nickel Academy, which becomes a microcosm of American racism in the mid-20th century.
“’Nickel Boys’ signals the emergence of a major filmmaking voice,” said Dennis Lim, artistic director of the New York Film Festival. “RaMell Ross’s fiction debut, like his previous work in photography and documentary, searches for new ways of seeing and, in so doing, expands the possibilities of visual language. It’s the most audacious American movie I have seen in some time, and we are excited and honored to open the New York Film Festival with it.”
Ross, director of the Oscar-nominated documentary “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” also wrote the screenplay with Joslyn Barnes. Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, David Levine and Barnes were producers of the film. Orion Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios will release “Nickel Boys” in select theaters on Oct. 25 with plans to expand through the fall.
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“What an absolute honor for ‘Nickel Boys’ to open the 62nd New York Film Festival… a daydream really, for the crew, the cast, and team who’ve committed so wholeheartedly to its vision,” Ross said. “The New York Film Festival in particular constellates much of what one aspires toward through filmic production. Since just after my undergrad when I was wooed by the still and moving image, it has been an extraordinary compendium for global aesthetics.”
Recent NYFF opening night films have included Todd Haynes’ soapy drama “May December,” Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise” adaptation, Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock” and Martin Scorsese’s crime epic “The Irishman.”
The NYFF Main Slate selection committee is chaired by Lim as well as Florence Almozini, Justin Chang, K. Austin Collins and Rachel Rosen. Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the 62nd New York Film Festival will take place from Sept. 27 through Oct. 14.
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